4 ms·

Piano music visualized on a logarithmic spiral

92 points by icey 17y ago

boredguy8 17y ago
Personally, I love the "Music Animation Machine" visualizations, especially of Bach. Toccata and Fugue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o "Little" Fugue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVadl4ocX0M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVadl4ocX0M Also enjoyable: Debussy's Clair de lune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlvUepMa31o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlvUepMa31o
- TheTarquin 17y ago
  Very cool links! Thanks for sharing. These bar-graph visualizations remind me of Gregorian notation for some reason.
- RevRal 17y ago
  Those links are great since really help you to "see" the relativity notes, which is one reason I like to experiment with my music notation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_scores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_scores *Here you can read more about Solitude, that crazy looking graphic at the top of the wiki article: http://at.or.at/hans/solitude/ http://at.or.at/hans/solitude/
- frankus 17y ago
  What's neat about the OP's video is that it shows the "periodicity" of the various octaves. Back in college (1996 or so -- it was on one of the first PowerPC macs) I put together an animation for a class project that was sort of a combination of the two using Bach's Invention #13. The view was of traveling down a tunnel of a sort of swirly green fog. Each note was represented by a little yellow or magenta stripe painted on the inside of the tunnel, based on which "part" (i.e. hand) was playing it. The angular position was determined by the pitch (which wrapped around at each octave), and the length of the stripe was determined by the duration of the note. All in all it was a really effective way of visualizing the song. I wish I would've videotaped it, because the source code is long gone and wouldn't run on modern hardware anyway.
  - eru 17y ago
    > I wish I would've videotaped it, because the source code is long gone and wouldn't run on modern hardware anyway. Emulation could have worked.
- eru 17y ago
  It's too sad the region where Bach (and I!) lived does not produce such outstanding musicians any longer.
RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
The music itself is perhaps best known from the Academy Award winning (best cartoon, 1946) Tom and Jerry cartoon, "The Cat Concerto" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWGQaczNL5I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWGQaczNL5I
TheTarquin 17y ago
Cool! This is a great way to visualize the relationship of notes in a chord. One of the harder things to teach in beginning music theory are chord forms, since it requires thinking relatively, rather than absolutely. Major and minor chords are related together not because of the notes themselves, but because of the intervals between them. In this visualization, though, all the related chords are roughly the same shape. Seems like it'd be a great way to harness visual thinking to teach a more abstract concept. Very cool!
- chipsy 17y ago
  Two-dimensional keyboard layouts mostly use regular chord shapes. It makes both theory and playability come a lot more easily - two fingerings per scale and chord, no adjustments for different keys. I own an Axis 49 and while I'll admit it isn't perfect for existing repertoire, it excels in every other respect. If you want to "learn music" this is the fastest way to do it.
zokier 17y ago
Isn't that a normal, not logarithmic, spiral?
- icey 17y ago
  My title is probably a little inaccurate. The frequencies decrease logarithmically as you move outward on the spiral.
gwern 17y ago
I wonder how playable a spiral pyramid version of that would be; I've long thought that a long line must be a suboptimal piano layout (like a single long alphabetic row would be bad for typing).
caryme 17y ago
If you find this interesting, you might want to check out the Topic 7 lecture notes from Bryan Pardo's Machine Perception of Music and Audio course at Northwestern University: http://music.cs.northwestern.edu/courses/eecs352/lectures.php http://music.cs.northwestern.edu/courses/eecs352/lectures.ph... Those notes show an example of a spiral pitch representation and discuss chromagrams (mapping complex wave forms to pitch classes) as well as other concepts. For a deeper look, check out the book Signals Sound and Sensation by William M. Hartmann.
speek 17y ago
I wonder if visualizing this kind of data can help people find what makes "popular" or "good" music.
nopinsight 17y ago
If someone can create an instrument arranged in this form, it might help a great deal with music education.
Dejen45 17y ago
Very hip visualization, reminiscent of integer notation (c=0, c#=1, d=2, etc) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_notation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_notation Music educators are slowly finding ways to catch up traditional pedagogy with the ever-expanding technologies. some color coating would even help younger players. fantastic work
briancooley 17y ago
This one is my favorite, for obvious reasons: http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=oDUyz8lGw58&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=oDUyz8lGw58&feature=relat...

92 points by icey 17y ago

Personally, I love the "Music Animation Machine" visualizations, especially of Bach. Toccata and Fugue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o "Little" Fugue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVadl4ocX0M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVadl4ocX0M Also enjoyable: Debussy's Clair de lune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlvUepMa31o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlvUepMa31o

TheTarquin 17y ago
Very cool links! Thanks for sharing. These bar-graph visualizations remind me of Gregorian notation for some reason.
RevRal 17y ago
Those links are great since really help you to "see" the relativity notes, which is one reason I like to experiment with my music notation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_scores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_scores *Here you can read more about Solitude, that crazy looking graphic at the top of the wiki article: http://at.or.at/hans/solitude/ http://at.or.at/hans/solitude/
frankus 17y ago
What's neat about the OP's video is that it shows the "periodicity" of the various octaves. Back in college (1996 or so -- it was on one of the first PowerPC macs) I put together an animation for a class project that was sort of a combination of the two using Bach's Invention #13. The view was of traveling down a tunnel of a sort of swirly green fog. Each note was represented by a little yellow or magenta stripe painted on the inside of the tunnel, based on which "part" (i.e. hand) was playing it. The angular position was determined by the pitch (which wrapped around at each octave), and the length of the stripe was determined by the duration of the note. All in all it was a really effective way of visualizing the song. I wish I would've videotaped it, because the source code is long gone and wouldn't run on modern hardware anyway.
- eru 17y ago
  > I wish I would've videotaped it, because the source code is long gone and wouldn't run on modern hardware anyway. Emulation could have worked.
eru 17y ago
It's too sad the region where Bach (and I!) lived does not produce such outstanding musicians any longer.

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago

The music itself is perhaps best known from the Academy Award winning (best cartoon, 1946) Tom and Jerry cartoon, "The Cat Concerto" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWGQaczNL5I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWGQaczNL5I

TheTarquin 17y ago

Cool! This is a great way to visualize the relationship of notes in a chord. One of the harder things to teach in beginning music theory are chord forms, since it requires thinking relatively, rather than absolutely. Major and minor chords are related together not because of the notes themselves, but because of the intervals between them. In this visualization, though, all the related chords are roughly the same shape. Seems like it'd be a great way to harness visual thinking to teach a more abstract concept. Very cool!

chipsy 17y ago
Two-dimensional keyboard layouts mostly use regular chord shapes. It makes both theory and playability come a lot more easily - two fingerings per scale and chord, no adjustments for different keys. I own an Axis 49 and while I'll admit it isn't perfect for existing repertoire, it excels in every other respect. If you want to "learn music" this is the fastest way to do it.

zokier 17y ago

Isn't that a normal, not logarithmic, spiral?

icey 17y ago
My title is probably a little inaccurate. The frequencies decrease logarithmically as you move outward on the spiral.

gwern 17y ago

I wonder how playable a spiral pyramid version of that would be; I've long thought that a long line must be a suboptimal piano layout (like a single long alphabetic row would be bad for typing).

caryme 17y ago

If you find this interesting, you might want to check out the Topic 7 lecture notes from Bryan Pardo's Machine Perception of Music and Audio course at Northwestern University: http://music.cs.northwestern.edu/courses/eecs352/lectures.php http://music.cs.northwestern.edu/courses/eecs352/lectures.ph... Those notes show an example of a spiral pitch representation and discuss chromagrams (mapping complex wave forms to pitch classes) as well as other concepts. For a deeper look, check out the book Signals Sound and Sensation by William M. Hartmann.

speek 17y ago

I wonder if visualizing this kind of data can help people find what makes "popular" or "good" music.

nopinsight 17y ago

If someone can create an instrument arranged in this form, it might help a great deal with music education.

Dejen45 17y ago

Very hip visualization, reminiscent of integer notation (c=0, c#=1, d=2, etc) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_notation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_notation Music educators are slowly finding ways to catch up traditional pedagogy with the ever-expanding technologies. some color coating would even help younger players. fantastic work

briancooley 17y ago

This one is my favorite, for obvious reasons: http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=oDUyz8lGw58&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=oDUyz8lGw58&feature=relat...